SLIDESHOW REVIEW: Andrea Dasha Reich: Flying Colors

Andrea Dasha Reich dazzles the eye with the organic shapes and saturated colors of her multilayered, resin-based creations. Through April 1 at Alfstad& Contemporary, 1419 5th Street; 366-6400.

Andrea Dasha Reich's "Red Crumple"

In "The Doors of Perception," Aldous Huxley wrote of the trippy legacy of folds in Western Art: "When you paint or carve drapery, you are painting or carving forms which, for all practical purposes, are nonrepresentational — the kind of unconditioned forms on which artists even in the most naturalistic tradition like to let themselves go." Reich shows that abandon in her "Crumple" series of swirling resin forms.

Andrea Dasha Reich's "Crumple Wall"

Reich's wall of crumple forms subverts your first impression of repetition. Your mind instantly thinks: the same shape, repeated. But it's not the same shape. Keep studying the crumples and the apparent simplicity melts away.

Andrea Dasha Reich's "Rainbow Tubes"

Reich's tube forms have an exuberant, organic quality -- the shapes of psychedelic kites or some new life form that fills the sky with color.

Andrea Dasha Reich's "Custo Blue Fusion 2"

Reich's "Fusion" series plays with the complexity of her signature biomorphic forms in a dense, mixed-media explosion of paint, epoxy resin and resin fragments. The artist fuses countless layers of two-dimensional planes together; Swiss cheese holes in the top layers reveal deeper and deeper levels -- glimpses of intricate organic structures.

Andrea Dasha Reich's "Miami Red Fusion"

Abstract art only works in a narrow quantum shell. If it's too pretty and precise, it feels decorative. If it's too ugly and chaotic, it doesn't feel like art. The narrow space where it does work: an inevitable pattern that's not a picture of something else. Here, Reich evokes the chaos of organic growth -- a riot of nameless life with its own internal logic.

Andrea Dasha Reich's "To Bonnard"

Here, Reich offers a homage to Pierre Bonnard's complex imagery and riotous color. One of the few pieces with clearly representational elements -- purple flowers raining down on the swirls of a primordial sea. Unearthly, but still recognizable.